Electric motors are increasingly used as drives in vehicles to provide alternatives to conventional internal combustion engines that require fossil fuels. Considerable efforts have already been made to improve the suitability of electric drives for everyday use, while also offering users the driving comfort they are used to.
A detailed description of an electric drive is provided in an article entitled “Highly Integrative and Flexible—Electric Drive Unit for Electric Vehicles” by Erik Schneider, Frank Fickl, Bernd Cebulski and Jens Liebold, which was published in the journal ATZ, Volume 113, 05/2011, pp. 360-365, and which is probably the closest prior art. This article describes a drive unit for an axle of a vehicle that includes an electric motor disposed concentrically and coaxially with a bevel-gear differential, and in which a two-speed shiftable planetary gear set which is also coaxial with the electric motor and the bevel-gear differential is disposed in the powertrain between the electric motor and the bevel-gear differential. The drive unit is very compact in design and, due to the two-speed shiftable planetary gear set, provides a good compromise between hill-climbing performance, acceleration and power consumption.